Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

“Does English have a subjunctive?” Jacob replied.

“Well, if you don’t know, darling, I don’t see how you can expect any of us to. The BBC or whoever it is that manufactures these delightful workbooks seems to be under the impression that there is such a thing, but the language is really in your countrymen’s custody at this stage, I feel, so shall we say it’s a skip?”

“Why are you asking me this, Melinda? You know I never plan more than ten minutes before class starts.”

“I’m trying to outfox your landlord. The one who keeps the flaming sword beside the telephone. Am I overdoing it?”

“He’s not paying any attention.”

“Oh, sorry. How embarrassing. How are you, then, dear?”

“Still a bit weak-minded in the afternoons and evenings. But it only hurts when I swallow. The side effect is I don’t have any desire to smoke, which is lucky, because I can’t leave the house to buy cigarettes.”

“Shall we arrange a shipment?”

“Prague smokes for me, is my current feeling.”

“It does that, doesn’t it.”

“Luboš visited yesterday,” Jacob volunteered.

“Luboš?…Oh, Luboš! Well done. Under their very noses. You are improving.”

“It wasn’t acrobatic or anything.”

“But I’m so pleased to hear that it can be when you’re in the pink.”

“Oh dear.”

“Darling, I’m just taking the tiniest fraction of the piss out of you.”

“I’m so misunderstood.”

“And an invalid, too. I’m calling in fact to say how sorry I am that Rafe and I won’t be there today.”

“Here? Why? I mean, I’d love to have you.”

“Oh, you don’t know yet, do you. And that’s because I was supposed to verify that you are agreeable. That you were agreeable? That may be the subjunctive, come to trouble us. Please say that you are agreeable. For Thanksgiving.”

“How did you know it was Thanksgiving?”

“You forget that Rafe is an American. When he told Annie, she had the idea of going over to cook you a Thanksgiving dinner, while you lie in your sickbed.”

“With a turkey?”

“Well, no, a chicken. I don’t believe there are turkeys in Prague.”

“They have them in the basement of Kotva, the department store in Republiky. I asked.”

“Do they? Annie will be crushed. She thinks she’s tapped every resource.”

“I won’t tell her.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t. It’s meant to be something of a coup de théâtre. They descend with a trussed fowl and sundry victuals. You know — something out of Dickens.”

“Who else is coming?”

“Thom, Kaspar, perhaps Henry. Rafe has to go to the institute. There are so many Americans there now they decided to have something. And so I have to go, too, as the ostensible girlfriend. I’d much rather pay you a visit, I assure you. And I will do, very soon.”

* * *

“You must tell us to go, if at any point we seem to be tiring you,” Annie said by way of preface. “We’ve brought a whole feast, you see,” she explained, bobbing, almost dancing with pleasure in her achievement. Dislodged by the long trip, her blond hair was straying away from her face in all directions like a lion’s. “You wouldn’t have thought it of me, would you, that I could manage such a thing. It isn’t a turkey, mind, but we can ‘stuff’ it for you, if you like. You see I’m very well informed about your ‘Thanksgiving.’”

“Very,” Jacob agreed.

“It sounds disgusting, in my opinion, ‘stuffing,’” she continued. “I’d never heard of it before Rafe told me. To put your fingers inside a raw bird. It’s the sort of thing they did on the frontier, isn’t it. To extend the meat.”

“No one’s ever done that sort of thing in Ireland?” Thom put in.

“I suppose they might have done,” she granted. “Meat pasties and such. I’m prepared to stuff, is what I mean to say.” From her bag she unpacked dry bread, sausage, carrots, apples, and at last a plastic-wrapped chicken.

“And I brought beer,” Henry said, as he stocked the refrigerator with bottles, “which I don’t suppose you’ll be well enough to drink, come to think of it.”

“You’ll drink them.”

“But it’s Thom who has the pièce de résistance,” Henry added.

From his backpack Thom took a burlap bag. “Brambory,” he announced.

“Where did you get them?” Jacob marveled.

“They’re just potatoes.” Annie objected. “I don’t think a potato ought to upstage a chicken .”

“It’s a fine chicken you’ve brought, Annie,” Thom reassured her.

“But potatoes,” Kaspar almost whispered. “You can’t buy them anywhere.”

“I bought them from one of my students,” Thom explained. “Little wanker asked to be paid in pounds — pounds or Tuzex, he said. Had to ask him what a Tuzex was.”

Jacob didn’t know either. “It’s a kind of artificial currency,” Henry explained, “for buying luxury goods in special shops. It was a way of distributing regime perks, really.”

“Whiskey and perfume and fur coats and such like,” Thom clarified.

“It doesn’t make sense any more,” Henry continued, “or it won’t in a few months, when Klaus finishes liberalizing the crown. But there used to be limits on how much Tuzex and Western currency a person could buy in a year, and people hoarded them.”

Jacob nodded. No doubt that was Collin’s ambition — to run the equivalent of a Tuzex shop in post-Communist Czechoslovakia.

“I told Thom I know a recipe for gratin,” Henry said. “I couldn’t find Gruyère. But I did find a cheese, and I have a bag of milk, in case you’re short.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Jacob said, accepting the bag from Henry. “It all sounds so lovely.” The milk lapped and quivered inside its plastic. “There are more chairs in the bedroom. I’m sorry I forgot to bring them in here.”

“You’re to rest while we work,” Annie ordered.

Jacob sat at the kitchen table and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he found Kaspar seated across from him. “I have brought only poems,” Kaspar said. “A small book that I am translating.”

“From Czech?”

“From Czech into German. The fellow was a journalist in the First Republic, and in Paris he fell in love with the surrealists. You will look at it later. I shall put it on the bookshelf in your bedroom for you now.”

The international gay guide was not there but safely hidden in a drawer under T-shirts. “Thank you. I don’t know if my Czech is good enough.”

Kaspar merely smiled. Jacob closed his eyes again. He listened blindly to Henry offering and uncapping beers, Annie clattering through pots and pans for a roasting tray, and Thom washing off his pocket knife so he could peel potatoes with it.

“Are you all right there?” Thom asked. “Shall Annie make you some tea?”

“Shall I?” She opened a cabinet. “Is this your usual?”

“The yellow one,” Jacob specified. “You have to light the burner with matches.”

“I had better turn it off until I find them then, hadn’t I, or we’ll all be gassed. But you’re meant to just sit there,” she insisted, stopping him as he moved to rise.

“Here.” Henry supplied a light. “Kaspar told us what happened to your friend. I was very sorry to hear it.”

“It’s kind of awful but I’m fine,” Jacob said as blandly as possible.

“It’s a rotten thing to do,” said Annie. “It’s a disappointment, when someone does that.”